Chapter 7 - Pricing Flashcards
Why is pricing important?
- it makes a pivotal contribution to profit maximisation
- the amount they are able to sell often determined by the price charged for the goods and services
- businesses make profits by selling goods at a price higher than their cost
What are the 3 main factors that influence price?
- Customers
- Competition
- Cost
What does a perfectly competitive market look like?
- Zero entry/ exit barriers
- perfect information
- companies aim to maximize profits
- homogeneous products
What does an imperfect competitive market look like?
- Monopoly
- Oligopoly
- Monopolistic competition
What is a zero entry/exit barriers market?
relatively easy to enter or exit as a business in a perfectly competitive market
What perfect information in relation to a competitive market?
prices and quality of products are assumed to be known to all consumers and producers
What is monopoly in a imperfect market?
- In which there is only one seller of a good.
- The seller dominates many buyers and can use its market power to set a profit-maximizing price
What is oligopoly in a imperfect market?
- a few companies dominate the market and are inter-dependent: firms must take into account likely reactions of their rivals to any change in price, output or forms of non-price competition.
What is monopolistic competition?
- products are similar, but not identical.
- many producers (‘price setters’) and many consumers in a given market, but no business has total control over the market price.
What are the 2 broad approaches to pricing?
- Demand based
- Cost based
- marketing based
Economic theory states that the monopolist maximizes profit when what?
Marginal cost = marginal revenue
What is marginal revenue?
The additional revenue from selling one extra unit
What is the marginal cost?
the cost of making one more unit. Usually the variable cost
What is the calculation to establish the linear relationship between price (P) and quantity demanded (Q) in the algebraic approach? (1)
P=a - bQ
What is ‘a’ in the algebraic approach?
the intercept - here the maximum theoretical price at which demand will fall to zero.
What is ‘b’ in the algebraic approach?
- the gradient of the line - here the amount the price has to change to change the demand by one unit
- always negative
How do we find the marginal revenue in the marginal revenue? (2)
Double the gradient to find the marginal revenue: MR = a -2bQ
What is the third step in the algebraic approach?
Establish the marginal cost MC. simply the variable.